YMMV / Star Trek S1 E2 "Charlie X"

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The titular Charlie X and his final comeuppance. A My God, What Have I Done? moment and final panic, or a sociopath willing to say anything to stay in this realm? Hell, Charlie in general. Misunderstood Jerkass Woobie or just a brat with godlike power and a Hair-Trigger Temper?
  • Janice crying for Charlie when he's taken away. Does she have sympathy for what the boy has gone through? Or is it just the full force of the trauma hitting her?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In the Recreation Room, Uhura sings Spock a song about him being the Devil while he strums his Vulcan lyre, after flashing her a wry smile; also qualifies as Early-Installment Weirdness as Spock's emotionless demeanor had not been fully codified by this episode.
• Funny Moments: After Yeoman Rand complains about Charlie spanking her, the discussion between Kirk and McCoy over who should take responsibility for the boy sounds a lot like two parents each trying to get the other to give their child The Talk.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Janice reporting an incident of sexual harassment to Kirk, which is taken seriously by the crew, is very sad when you know that Grace Lee Whitney detailed an incident of sexual assault by one of the executives (who went unnamed) and she was later dropped from the show without explanation. The latter also makes Charlie making her disappear and her happy return sting quite a bit (although Leonard Nimoy did eventually get her brought back for the movies).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Uhura flirtily teasing Spock in song in light of the 2009 movie.
  • The similarity of Charlie X's supposed name with real-life musician Charli XCX.
• Narm:
  • Whenever Charlie performs one of his "tricks," the camera zooms in on his face as a dramatic chord plays and his eyes roll all the way back into his head. While clearly meant to be creepy, it ends up coming across as more hilarious than anything else.
  • A similarly meant-to-be-creepy-but-actually-kind-of-funny moment comes when Charlie turns one of the women on the ship into an iguana. While certainly not a pleasant experience for the poor girl, there's just something very silly about the camera panning down to show a plain old lizard just chilling on the floor where the woman once was.
• Signature Scene: The scene of Kirk trying to talk Charlie out of his Entitled to Have You attitude to Janice and persuade him to respect womens' choices has become very heavily quoted or linked as the counter-example to the popular Common Knowledge view of Kirk as a predatory seducer of women.
• Values Resonance: While talking to Charlie about his crush on Janice, Kirk tells him that romance isn't a one-sided thing and one has to consider whether the other person wants those attentions. In fact, when Charlie slaps her on the ass, she immediately calls him on it and reports it to Kirk, getting him to explain to Charlie why it was wrong.
  • A minor case, but Kirk's comment that there was nothing wrong with Charlie that wasn't wrong with "every other human male." If the episode came out today he almost certainly would have specified "heterosexual male." While you could argue the comment is equally applicable to gay men, it does ignore asexual men.

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